Whether you’re depicting an ugly urban dystopia, or merely the end of the world as we know it, a lot of work goes into crafting scenes worthy of splashy summer releases. Today, we have two videos that show just what that labor entails.

A new featurette spotlights the special effects of Neill Blomkamp‘s Elysium, while 15 minutes of B-roll footage show what went on behind the scenes of Edgar Wright‘s The World’s End. Hit the jump to check them out.

The Elysium video comes from Wired. While a lot of sci-fi films rely on green screen technology to create fantastical landscapes, Blomkamp tried to keep things grounded by looking at real-world references and utilizing practical effects whenever possible. “Neil wanted a lot of detail, but the detail had to make sense,” explains visual effects supervisor Peter Muyzers.

The result is a world that looks pretty different from ours, but feels surprisingly realistic. I had my issues with Elysium, but Blomkamp’s ability to construct a realistic, highly specific movie universe wasn’t one of them.

The World’s End B-roll comes from Making Of (via Reddit). There don’t seem to be any major spoilers within, but those who haven’t seen the movie yet should tread carefully to be safe. The video shows the team filming, rehearsing, practicing choreography, and more.

I always find it interesting and kind of weird to watch B-roll footage of scenes from the movie. Most of the bits shown here don’t come from particularly effects-heavy sequences, so they don’t look dramatically different from the final product. (In contrast to something like the green screen-heavy The Hobbit, for example.) But the footage certainly feels very different before it’s polished and fine-tuned for release.